Sunday, October 16

This Day In History

• 1793   During the French Revolution, Queen Marie Antoinette was beheaded.
  
• 1846   The painkiller, ether, was demonstrated successfully for the first time -- in Boston’s Massachusetts General Hospital. The drug was administered by William T.G. Morton, a ‘dentist’ (he never attended dental or medical school), of Charlestown, MA.
  
• 1859   Abolitionist John Brown led a group of about 20 men in a raid on Harper's Ferry.
  
• 1909   The first seesaw World Series ended, after each team -- Pittsburgh Pirates vs. Detroit Tigers -- had won alternately until game seven. Pittsburgh pitcher Babe Adams came through with a 6-hit, 8-0 win over Detroit. It was his third complete-game victory and gave the Pirates their first world championship.
  
• 1912   It was the day for game eight of the World Series. What? Game eight? Yes, it seems game two was called for darkness with the score tied, and did not count. Anyway, back to game eight, between the Boston Red Sox and the New York Yankees: Boston won, 2-1, in ten innings. Talk about even-steven baseball...
  
• 1916   Margaret Sanger opened the first birth-control clinic, in New York City.
  
• 1946   Ten Nazi war criminals condemned during the Nuremberg trials were hanged.
  
• 1962   The Cuban missile crisis began as President John F. Kennedy was informed that reconnaissance photographs had revealed the presence of missile bases in Cuba.
  
• 1970   Anwar Sadat was elected president of Egypt, succeeding the late Gamal Abdel Nasser.
  
• 1973   Henry Kissinger and Le Duc Tho were named winners of the Nobel Peace Prize; Tho declined the award.
  
• 1978   Polish Cardinal Karol Wojtyla was elected pope by the Roman Catholic Church's College of Cardinals; he took the name John Paul II.
  
• 1987   Rescuers freed Jessica McClure, an 18-month-old girl who trapped in an abandoned well for 58 hours in Midland, Texas.
  
• 1991   A man crashed a pickup truck into a restaurant in Killeen, Texas, and opened fire, killing 23 people before taking his own life.
  
• 1995   A vast throng of black men gathered in Washington for the ''Million Man March'' led by Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan.
  
• 1997   Author James Michener died in at age 90.
  
• 1998   David Trimble and John Hume were named recipients of the Nobel Peace Prize for brokering the Northern Ireland peace accord.
  
• 1998   British police arrested former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet in London.
  
• 2000   Missouri Gov. Mel Carnahan and his son were killed in a plane crash south of St. Louis while en route to a rally for Carnahan's U.S. Senate campaign.
  
• 2001   Twelve Senate offices were closed and hundreds of staffers were tested for anthrax.
  
• 2002   President George W. Bush signed a congressional resolution authorizing war against Iraq.
  
• 2002   The White House announced that North Korea had disclosed it had a nuclear weapons program.
  

Happy Birthday To

• 1758   Noah Webster (author, lexicographer: Webster’s American Dictionary of the English Language; died May 28, 1843)
  
• 1854   Oscar (O’Flahertie Fingal Wills) Wilde (playwright: The Importance of Being Earnest, Picture of Dorian Gray; died Nov 30, 1900)
  
• 1886   David Ben-Gurion (Israel’s first prime minister; died in Dec 1, 1973)
  
• 1888   Eugene (Gladstone) O’Neill (Nobel Prize [1936] and Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright: The Ice Man Cometh [1946]; Long Day’s Journey into Night; died Nov 27, 1953)
  
• 1898   William O. Douglas (jurist: U.S. Supreme Court Justice [1939-1975]; died Jan 19, 1980)
  
• 1925   Angela Lansbury (Tony Award-winning actress; Murder, She Wrote)
  
• 1931   Chuck (Charles) Colson (government: Watergate co-conspirator)
  
• 1946   Suzanne Somers (Mahoney) (actress: Three’s Company)